Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Drafting Frauleins Into The Wehrmacht

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday unveiled some concrete steps to promote the role of women in corporate Japan, with the country facing a shrinking workforce and rapidly aging population...

The prime minister said his government would expand after-school child-care services, which are already providing care for 850,000 elementary school students after school and on weekends for working mothers at low cost...

“Sustained efforts will be needed to promote women’s work participation,” Mr. Abe said at a symposium in Tokyo that discussed “womenomics.” Last year, Mr. Abe set a goal of filling 30% of leadership positions in the public and private sectors with women by 2020.

Japanese government debt is totally out of control, the birthrate is pitifully small, the population is shrinking and the solution is ... get more women to join the workforce!

All I can think of is the lengths the Nazis went to late in the war to shore up the depleted Wehrmacht. They drafted young boys, old men, war cripples, anyone who could stumble around and hold a rifle.

The Japanese government isn't promoting women in the workforce because they think it's good for women, they're doing it to stave off total collapse. The lives of these women and their children are just game pieces being moved around the board.

It didn't work in 1944-5 and it's not going to work now. Image source.

3 comments:

The issue of low birth rate is linked to higher female participation in the labor force. So his solution only exacerbates the long term problem. This is a problem coming to other parts of the developed world, it just hit first in Japan.